Welcome To Metropolis

This is pretty shocking. The University of Delaware is actually indoctrinating students who live in campus housing. It is nothing less than that, in fact, the university’s own "teaching" materials refers to it as a “treatment” for students’ "incorrect attitudes and beliefs".

The university’s views are forced on students through a comprehensive manipulation of the residence hall environment, from mandatory training sessions to “sustainability” door decorations. Students living in the university’s eight housing complexes are required to attend training sessions, floor meetings, and one-on-one meetings with their Resident Assistants (RAs). The RAs who facilitate these meetings have received their own intensive training from the university, including a “diversity facilitation training” session at which RAs were taught, among other things, that “[a] racist is one who is both privileged and socialized on the basis of race by a white supremacist (racist) system. The term applies to all white people (i.e., people of European descent) living in the United States, regardless of class, gender, religion, culture or sexuality.”

The university suggests that at one-on-one sessions with students, RAs should ask intrusive personal questions such as “When did you discover your sexual identity?” Students who express discomfort with this type of questioning often meet with disapproval from their RAs, who write reports on these one-on-one sessions and deliver these reports to their superiors. One student identified in a write-up as an RA’s “worst” one-on-one session was a young woman who stated that she was tired of having “diversity shoved down her throat.”

According to the program’s materials, the goal of the residence life education program is for students in the university’s residence halls to achieve certain “competencies” that the university has decreed its students must develop in order to achieve the overall educational goal of “citizenship.” These competencies include: “Students will recognize that systemic oppression exists in our society,” “Students will recognize the benefits of dismantling systems of oppression,” and “Students will be able to utilize their knowledge of sustainability to change their daily habits and consumer mentality.”

At various points in the program, students are also pressured or even required to take actions that outwardly indicate their agreement with the university’s ideology, regardless of their personal beliefs. Such actions include displaying specific door decorations, committing to reduce their ecological footprint by at least 20%, taking action by advocating for an “oppressed” social group, and taking action by advocating for a “sustainable world.”

This is one of the most appalling examples of authoritarian totalitarian brainwashing I have ever heard of in the United States. Read this again:

“[a] racist is one who is both privileged and socialized on the basis of race by a white supremacist (racist) system. The term applies to all white people (i.e., people of European descent) living in the United States, regardless of class, gender, religion, culture or sexuality.”

Change the race to any other one and see how utterly offensive – and how blatantly racist – that statement is. They're preparing student alright. For a specific place in society. Welcome to Metropolis, workers.

UPDATE: Regular readers had to see this one coming:

Others understandably unhappy with the commisars of the UofD: Joanne Jacobs (aka my Blogmother): "Students weren’t asked if they found the “treatment” intrusive, annoying, a waste of time and/or a violation of their rights."

Right Voices: "You have the right to free speech as long as the liberals approve of the message. You can have free thought, just as long as you think what the liberals want you to think."

Hot Air: "FIRE is calling for the program to be dismantled. That would be a good start."

SCSU Scholars: "I've written years ago about our own student orientations and those given to others and their parents, but this one appears to jump the shark."

Jason Steck (At MVDG Gazette): "1984, it would appear, was not avoided so much as delayed until 2007."

Mac's Mind: "Nevertheless, it’s not so amazing that this type of thought policing happens at our colleges, but it is amazing that the dumbasses at this school are blatant about it."

Colossus Of Rhodey: "For all those aghast at George Bush's America supposedly "leading us down the road to fascism," the sad fact is that all you have to do to really find it is just take a trip to Delaware's own Newark (that's pronounced "new ark" for non-Delawareans) campus."

Sister Toldjah: "Put another nail in the coffin on the liberal lie about supporting “free thought.” "

David Thompson: "Presumably, Professor Stanley Fish has no objection to “bridges” being built in this way, or to the term ‘racist’ being applied to “all white people… living in the United States.” And presumably he still believes that students “don’t have to worry” about the spread of campus speech codes and other neurotic sensitivities. Again, I beg to differ. "

Mahablog: "….eventually you get to an article about a program at the University of Delaware that really does sound creepy and objectionable. But I’m not seeing a connection to Glenn." (Hint – it's because of the obscenely racist phrase used in the training materials – that are officially sanctioned by UofD. And it is more than objectionable and creepy.)

Fausta: "And it'll cost you $16,098 if you're a Delaware resident, $27,348 if you're from out of state. I guess that part of their "consumer mentality" should not be affected."

Flopping Aces: "This is it. This is the liberals wet dream. A perfect world of Socialism/Communism gripping the throats of all who enter their domain. You must submit and believe what we believe." NOTE: Curt also has the contact information for the UofD president.

Weasel Zippers: "Reminds me of the re-education gulags the Soviets put dissidents in and I'm sure that's where they're drawing their inspiration from."

18 Responses to Welcome To Metropolis

I’ve worked in NYC with every nationality imaginable. I was a computer programmer.
I worked with Asians, Eastern Europeans, Middle Easterners, South Americans, Africans. They all had their beef about something in the New World but across the board they always said that Americans were the most non racist people on the Earth.
They would recite many examples of horrific racist behavior in there own countrys. The killing of ethnic Chinese in Indonesia etc. etc….

Well, no, actually Laura the statement is verbatim from materials for a “Diversity Facilitation Training” session held for the university. So it may have been an “outside speaker” but it was the officially sanctioned training of the University.

There’s an underground movie called Indoctrinate U. that shows the same sort of twisted “re-education” courses that leftist regimes in Vietnam inflicted on South Vietnamese after 1975. Internment for free-thinkers has been a leftist idiosyncrasy since Lenin in the early twenties. Straight out of Arthur Koestler’s “Darkness at Noon.” Down the road, perhaps we can hope for another Solzhenitsyn? Hopefully, not Anne Applebaum’s Gulag in an American setting!

My daughter is taking a course at FAU, a state university in Florida, where she is educated in political thinking in, of all courses, an ENGLISH class! [She is being taught “cosmopolitanism” by a Cuban female who is ESL and cannot spell or employ correct English grammar. Her spelling of the word “idea” on the blackboard came out as “ide” and her only qualification for the TA job seems to be her marriage to an FAU political perfesser. ]

The Thought Police are beginning to assert their mad conformist agendas in the universities—where they can punish recalcitrants and hold-outs with bad grades.

They should not only stop the program but they should also reimburse tuition to all students forced to experience this AND those who approved this program should be dismissed from the University staff.

In regards to the situation at the University of Delaware, it is unfortunate that FIRE has chosen to vilify the university with such ruthless rhetoric. In one fell swoop, FIRE has completely flipped this issue on its head, and in doing so, has been able to control the spin on the entire story.

I am currently a senior at the University of Delaware and I was a resident assistant (RA) for the maligned Office of Residence Life for one semester last year. Not only has FIRE grossly misconstrued what is actually occurring at the university but they have added unnecessarily loaded language in their presentation of the issue which has further incited the criticism being foisted upon Delaware.

To make clear before people paint me as a mouthpiece for the university: I am no longer working for the Office of Residence Life and I left voluntarily at the end of last semester. Also, I can only speak from my own experience and my observations of the system as a whole, and my statements do not necessarily reflect the opinions of other RAs.

In my time working with this department, I was often at odds with many policies put in place but never did I feel that the office’s programs were “Orwellian,” a “grave intrusion into students’ private beliefs” or coercive, as FIRE portrays them. In fact, I was skeptical of the effectiveness of many of the office’s programs but never did I think they endangered students’ right to free speech or their intellectual welfare.

To put it simply — the university wants to promote diversity and facilitate social tolerance among its students. There is no subversive indoctrination, no hidden agenda. The university feels, to paraphrase what I gathered from my time employed by the Office of Residence Life, that students should progress as individuals during their time spent at Delaware and feels it is responsible for exposing them to what it deems character-building social concepts and qualities.

The university does have in place an extensive program to promote tolerance among its students living in the residence halls. Yes, it has a list of “competencies” it hopes students achieve in their time at the university and it does hope students embrace a notion of “citizenship.” However, there is no “comprehensive manipulation” as FIRE claims.

In my time as an RA, I was required to attend a class titled, “Contemporary Issues for Resident Assistants.” The purpose of the course was to educate RAs about the range of divisive issues facing college students and to prepare RAs to deal with any problems they might encounter in working with residents. We frequently covered diversity-related topics — issues relating to religion, ethnicity, socio-economic status, sexuality, gender, etc. — and the purpose of the course was to learn how to be tolerant of and understand different people and situations.

To be fair, not all of the material in the class dealt with these issues, however. We were also taught how to deal with sexual abuse, roommate-to-roommate conflicts, alcohol abuse, and a host of other issues which were relevant to working with largely underclassmen residents.

Some of the coursework and activities were bluntly direct in their message. The university very obviously strived to instill in us near-universal tolerance and acceptance — or at least the cognizant awareness of what problems we might encounter in our positions and how to deal with them — so that we would be better equipped to do our jobs working with residents.

However, there was no stipulation that we as students had to agree with the university’s position on these issues. In fact, few in the class (all fellow RAs) truly believed everything we were taught and felt much of the material was overstated, silly and patronizing. But none were actually against what was being taught. Most of us readily agreed that the university had the right intention — trying to make its students better people, which is what all universities try to do after all, right? — but misfired on the execution of those lessons.

As for the “training sessions, floor meetings, and one-on-one meetings with their Resident Assistants (RAs)” that FIRE says students are supposedly required to attend: never in my experience did I see any students forced into a meeting they had an issue with or truly did not feel comfortable attending. While students were greatly encouraged to attend these meetings and these may have been promoted as mandatory, there were no consequences for absence. In fact, my meetings were attended by fewer than 50 percent of floor residents. How did I advertise them? Email notifications followed by knocking on each resident’s door to tell them when the meeting would be held. Hardly coercive, in my view.

In general, it was a common occurrence for students to skip meetings at their leisure and there were no repercussions besides a “please try to come next time.” There were literally zero things we could do to punish residents, and moreso, no RAs that I knew felt the need for such punishment.

In the one-on-one sessions, they are intended to be relatively short meetings between a resident and an RA with the hope of building a rapport between both sides to better create a “floor community.” The RAs were given rough guidelines as to how to conduct these meetings, but they were largely left up to the RA to plan and conduct. Yes, RAs were expected to ask somewhat-personal questions to better get to know residents, but I have never heard of a situation where students were generally offended or made uncomfortable by an RA’s questions or conversation. The entire point of these meetings is to promote a positive relationship between RA and resident, not to interrogate residents or scare them away from future interactions. Again, in my experience, these were encouraged but never forced onto residents; if a resident ever had a serious issue with this kind of meeting, I cannot see a request to be excused for personal reasons being denied.

If anything, any problems relating to residence hall suppression of freedom of speech is due to problems relating to the work of individual RAs and not the system as a whole.

I could go on and on with examples from my semester as an RA. From my first-hand experience, FIRE’s allegations are largely unfounded and serve only to stir a pot that is essentially non-existent. I truly hope the FIRE’s Web site re-evaluates its statements and tones down its rhetoric as to prevent the university from taking flak it does not deserve.